Higher education, lower standards

5:04 PM,
Jan. 14, 2014

Written by

Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Everyone should go to college, we're frequently told. But what if we had a college, and nobody came? And still got credit anyway.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill may not have gotten quite to that point, but it's come close: More than 200 classes offered by the African Studies department, and very popular with athletes, appear not to have actually existed. Some of these courses "appeared to have little or no instruction. Nine of those classes listed instructors who said they had nothing to do with the classes, and that related records with their handwriting were forged."